Embalmer 2

I kind of like this volume, even though there’s not much plot progression.  It’s going from one story to the next.  I can see that the main couple is moving together.  That’s fine, but again, I’m hoping a plot will spring up, because I’d hate to see the series just… stop rather than end.

Let’s see, what happened in this volume?  I liked the stories well enough, they’re all quite good in their ways, if a little heavy-handed.  The first one involved the main love interest, and was about coming to terms with death.

The second story was probably my favorite, it was about the main character as a kid trying to come to terms with what his father did and how it ostracised his family.  He meets an older lady who tells him she’s an undertaker, and the two form a friendship.  The lady turns out to be… well, she teaches him how to lie at just the right time, I guess, which is one of the quirks to his character that I like so much.

I also really liked one of the stories towards the end of the volume where he reveals that he lives like a slob just to get the love interest to come over and clean for him.  He nearly breaks down after not being able to see her, and the mess in his apartment, made intentionally by him, is driving him crazy.  It was pretty cute, and kind of intense in the way that Mitsukazu Mihara’s stories can be.

One of the more ridiculously heavy-handed stories in the volume was about a girl who wanted to compete with the main character by providing lifelike dolls of the deceased instead of embalming them.  The story follows a woman whose son is killed that purchases one of these dolls and continues to take care of it as if it was alive.  More stuff comes up at the end of the story about her family and her son’s death… just like it would have in Doll.  Not having an entire volume of these stories shoving morals down my throat helped me appreciate it a little more, as heavy as it was, though.

I’ll keep on through the next two volumes.  It’s not spectacular, but I like the stories well enough, and the art has its own style, even if I don’t particularly like the way people are drawn.  Maybe the plot really will wind up just being the love story between the two characters.  That’ll be fine, I guess, but I’m hoping it picks up a little more if that’s the case.